Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configurations

The SearchStax Site Search solution has an easy-to-use interface for updating, enhancing, and managing the search experience for your website.

The “Basic Configurations” are the easy adjustments that business users can make in the search experience.

• Search Fields: Match user queries against a list of Search Fields.
• Results Fields: Choose which fields to return in the search results.
• Faceting: Choose which fields to use for facet generation.
• Ranking: Apply “boost” multipliers to results that meet special criteria.
• Spell Check: When a query returns no results, it automatically runs a new query using a similar word from the index.
• Stopwords: Common words to remove from queries to obtain sharper focus.

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Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configurations > Search Fields

SearchStax Site Search solution matches user queries against a list of Search Fields. This list is a powerful tool for focusing the search on relevant material. 

Click on an available field name to move it into the list of fields to search. The (X) button on the right removes a field from the active list.  

Note the Reload Schema icon above the list of fields. If you can’t find a field in the list, try reloading the schema. Changes to your website’s Solr schema are not automatically updated in Site Search.

Click the Save Draft button before you leave or refresh a page. Otherwise, changes can be lost. The Publish button makes this Search Profile available to the Search Preview screen. 

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Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configurations > Results Fields

The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Results Fields screen lets you configure two important features:

• It lets you choose which data fields Solr will return in the search results. (To choose which fields will be used to calculate the relevancy score, see the Search Fields screen.)
• It also lets you assign returned field values to specific display areas on the search-results “card.”

Select a field from the Return Field droplist to add it to the display of search results. The Label is a human-friendly label to display beside the field value. Click the (X) button on the right to remove it. Note that you can also select a field and use the (+) and (-) buttons to position it in the results list.  

You may also map the field value into a pre-formatted position on the search-results card. For instance, you could assign the document type to the “Ribbon” field to display it in a label at the top of the card. Fields that are mapped to “Url” will be the destination of a results card once clicked. For fields that are set to use “No mapping”, these will be displayed in the results card after all the mapped fields in the order that it is set here.

Mapping a field that contains image URLs to “Thumbnail” will render the images within your results card.

To display the URL as a field value in your results card in addition to making it a destination, use the field once more and set it as a “No mapping”.

Note the Reload Schema icon above the list of fields. If you can’t find a field in the list, try reloading the schema. Changes to your website’s Solr schema are not automatically updated in SearchStax Studio.

Scroll down a little to see the spin button that lets us adjust the number of result items to display in each page of the output. 

Finally, there is a Hit Highlighting checkbox. If checked, matching keywords will be <em>highlighted</em> whenever they appear in a search result. See the Help Center’s Hit Highlighting Snippets page for further information.

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Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configurations > Faceting

“Facets” are the lists of field values that appear on your application’s search page. The lists are populated from the set of matching items, and are used to “drill down” and better “focus” the search. 

The Faceting screen lets you choose which fields to use for facet generation. For each facet list, you can assign a user-friendly display label. Limiting the number of displayed values keeps the facet lists short and easy to use.

Choose an index field from the Facet Field droplist. Give it a human-friendly Label. Set the Max Facet Values to show in the list. Decide whether to sort the values by Count or Alphanumeric (asc/desc) order. The (+) button on the right adds the new facet to the list of facets below. 

Select a facet and click the Move Up and Move Down buttons to control how the facets will be ordered on the search page. 

Note the Reload Schema icon above the list of fields. Try reloading the schema if you can’t find a field in the list. Changes to your website’s Solr schema are not automatically updated in Site Search field lists.

Click the Save Draft button before you leave or refresh a page. Otherwise, changes can be lost. The Publish button updates the search configuration to make the changes active. 

View the facet changes by navigating to the Hosted Search Experience. Regenerate and then View to see the changed facets.

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Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configurations > Ranking

The Ranking screen lets us apply “boost” multipliers to relevance scores of result items that meet special criteria.

Smart Ranking

Enable Smart Ranking: Enable or disable the Site Search Smart Ranking feature. Smart Ranking reorders search results to match the searcher’s intent.

Field Ranking

Enable Field Ranking: Enable or disable various boost features that are configured from this screen.

• Search Field: If there is a match within a specific field, boost the item’s relevance score.
• Field Value: If a field contains a specific value (whether matched or not), boost the item’s relevance score.
• Function: Boost the item’s relevance score based on a value returned by a function.

Slide the controls left and right to establish the relative importance of a match in each field. A default (unboosted) field has a boost multiplier of 1. 

Search Field

To boost an item when a match occurs within a specific field, select “Search Field” and choose the field from a list. Click the (+) button to create a slider control for that field. Use the slider to adjust the boost.

Note the Reload Schema icon above the list of fields. If you can’t find a field in the list, try reloading the schema. Changes to your website’s Solr schema are not automatically updated in Site Search.

Field Value

To create a boost based on the presence of a specific field value in the result item, select the “Field Value” option and then fill in the field name and the desired value.

Function

To calculate a partial relevance score based on the value of a field, select the Function option and type in a Solr Function Query expression. Click the (+) button to create a slider control.

Some example functions you can use are:

1. To boost if the field ‘sitename’ contains ‘Public’: termfreq(sitename,'Public')
2. To boost by a date field, ‘publish_date’:
   recip(ms(NOW,publish_date),3.16e-11,10,1)

Click the Save Draft button before you leave or refresh a page. Otherwise, changes can be lost. The Publish button makes this Search Profile available to the Preview screen.

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Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configurations > Spell Check

When a query returns no results, the Spell Check feature locates similar-looking words in the index (Data Driven) or in a custom list (Dictionary Driven). The Spell Check feature automatically runs a new query based on the similar word. See Spell Check vs. Auto-Suggest for more perspective.

The following image shows a spell check response to a “no results” situation:

Spell Check must be enabled by a checkbox. Be sure to Publish your changes.

Dictionary-Driven Spell Check

If dictionary-driven, Site Search uses a dictionary that you provide. 

You can build the dictionary one word at a time or upload a .TXT file. The maximum file size is 10MB. A newline should separate individual words. When you upload a file, it appends words to the previous list. Duplicate entries are ignored. Site Search can accommodate up to 25000 spellcheck entries. 

Data-Driven Spell Check

You can direct the Spell Check feature to look for keywords in one of the search fields. Heading fields, for instance, often contain a dense set of high-relevance keywords. Select the Data-Driven spell check method. This opens a new control for selecting a search field.

Data+Dictionary Driven

Site Search supports using both Spell Check features at the same time. You can draw spelling matches from a search field and also supplement this resource by adding individual words to a dictionary.

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Site Search > Configurations > Basic Configurations > Stopwords

Stopwords are terms that degrade the keyword search, such as “and,” “the,” “of,” and so forth. There is no point in indexing them because they appear in every document. See Why Stopwords? for more perspective.

The SearchStax Site Search solution’s Stopwords screen lets you build a list one word at a time, or upload a list. Any word on the list will be automatically removed from subsequent queries.

Type a stopword into the Word field and click the (+) button. This adds the word to the list. 

You can highlight a word in the list and click the trash button to delete it. The Upload button lets you select a local file and upload it. When you upload a file, it appends words to the previous list. Duplicate entries are ignored.

• It accepts TXT files.
• A stopword file may be up to 10MB in size.
• The words should be delimited by newlines. 
• Site Search can accommodate up to 25000 stop words.

The cloud icon on the right is the Download List feature. It downloads a reloadable TXT file.

Note that a button at the bottom of the screen lets you discard your changes and revert to the previously saved list. 

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